The semiconductor industry has experienced rapid growth due to improvements in the integration density of a variety of electronic components (e.g., transistors, diodes, resistors, capacitors, etc.). For the most part, this improvement in integration density has come from shrinking a semiconductor process node (e.g., shrinking the process node toward a sub-20 nanometer (nm) node).
Shrinking the semiconductor process node often involves reducing an operating voltage and a current consumption of an electronic circuit developed in the semiconductor process node. For example, the operating voltages of some electronic circuits have been reduced from 5V to 3.3V, 2.5V, 1.8V, and even 0.9V. A wave of mobile device popularity has increased pressure in the industry to develop low power consumption circuits that drain miniscule operating current from batteries that power the mobile devices. Lower operating current extends battery life of battery-operated mobile devices, such as smartphones, tablet computers, ultrabooks, and the like.